Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Minding Mass Transit Across the Nation

June 29, 2010: A student of art at the California College of Art riding the 27 Bryant from the Flower Mart, loaded down with flowers that she will arrange at the restaurant where she works. You do not need a car ...

Perhaps 100 people rallied in support of mass transit agencies all over the country -- and, in particular, two bills now in Congress to support mass transit -- the Public Transportation Preservation Act of 2010 (S. 3412 and H.R. 5418) and H.R. 2746/S. 3189 -- on Tuesday, June 29, 2010 in San Francisco. This rally continued a number of rallies in support of public transportation that started in Atlanta and that will end in Miami. At the end of the rallies organizers say they will put up a Jumbotron in front of the Capital Building in Washington, DC, that flashes a constant message: Save Our Ride. The point? To stop the degradation of the nation's transit systems as a result of the economic downturn ...

The Public Transportation Preservation Act proposes to allocate $2 billion in emergency aid to the nation's 7,700 public transportation systems. It's sponsor is Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd. The other measure, H.R. 2746/S. 3189, seeks to amend current law to permit federal money to be used to support transit agency operations and not just capital projects.

How meaningful would $2 billion distributed among the 7,700 agencies throughout the United States be? By itself, not very. But in combination with the other bill, it could be significant.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which manages car traffic, bus and light rail transportation, taxis, bicycles, and pedestrian safety, has in the last three years suffered budget shortfalls totaling over $200 million. On May 8, in response to the most recent shortfall, the agency cut service by 10 percent. In particular, the agency reduced late night bus service and stopped running service on community bus lines -- many of which serve hard-to-reach neighborhoods at the top of San Francisco's steep hills -- at 9:30 pm instead of 11:30 pm or later.

The largest piece of the SFMTA budget pie goes to employee wages and benefits (if you don't count the $1.2 billion Central Subway project, which is in line to get over $900 million in federal funds if the SFMTA can prove that this massive capital project will not have a negative impact on the day-to-day operations of the agency's buses and light rail).

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, his ally on the Board of Supervisors Sean Elsbernd, and a number of others have been making the bus and light rail operators out to be the bogeymen in this amputation of service. Supervisor Sean Elsbernd is now collecting signatures for a ballot measure that will eliminate the current driver wage floor and replace it with collective bargaining in the hopes that passage of the measure will compel the drivers to agree to money-saving work rule changes. Among the work rule changes that many people talk about are adding part-time drivers to work the morning and evening rush hours, replacing the full-time drivers who have less work during the middle of the day.

Irwin Lum, president of the Transport Workers United-Local 250.

But a recently released Budget Analyst's audit of the agency found that a move to hire part-time drivers (all drivers now are full-time) would save only about $3 million annually -- compared to the $100 million in additional deficits that the agency is now facing.

Two times in recent months, the 2,200 or so drivers have been asked to vote up or down on work rules changes related to part-time drivers and other matters that would supposedly save the agency money. Both times, the drivers have voted against the changes.

Why?

I can't get my head around this -- and I suspect most other members of the public can't either.

"Part-time is not reasonable," Lum told me after the rally. When the agency had part-time drivers a few years ago, "People worked a couple hours in the morning and a couple hours in the afternoon and evening. They had other jobs during the day. This is a health and safety issue."

He added that in 2005, when the agency last had part-time drivers, in response to another agency budget crisis, "We offered early retirement and offered the part-time employees full-time employment [in order to save money]."

He said something about furlough days as well -- as if there has been some negotiations going about these. But he did not elaborate on the details of the controversy.

A revote "is not going to happen as long as we have a gun to our heads with [Elsbernd's] charter amendment," he added. "We're trying to educate voters that Sean's thing is not really reform."

(And as to Public Defender Jeff Adachi's pension reform measure for which he is collecting signatures, "There's no room for him to run from the left for mayor, so he's trying to run to the right of Sean Elsbernd.")

Note: on June 29 the SF Gate announced that Newsom and SFMTA Executive Director Nat Ford had agreed to restore half of the service that had been cut on September 4. The SF Appeal announced the specifics of the restoration of service on June 30. I guess Newsom and Ford are saying that they will agree to restore half of the service on September 4 if the San Francisco County Transportation Authority commissioners (the 11 members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors with their other hats on) agrees to allocate $7 million from the sales tax dedicated to the SFCTA. But, hey, that's what the Board of Supes was saying all along: you agree to restore the service, and we'll allocate the money.

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The Rhetoric ...

Tim Paulson, head of the San Francisco Labor Council, MCs a pro-mass transit rally in front of San Francisco's old federal building on June 29, 2010.

From Paulson:

"The Amalgamated Transit Union and the Transport Workers Union of America are in the house ..."

From Lum, again:

"We've had service cuts, fare increases, and constant scapegoating of the drivers. We need a mass movement for the reallocation of federal dollars to operations across the country."

And:

"It's important that we further increase public transportation, not cut it ... Students, poor people, working people are the ones most hurt when transit is cut ... We need a green economy ... How can we get people out of their cars and onto mass transit? It needs to be affordable and dependable."

ATU Local 192 President Claudia Hudson, the only woman on the line up of speakers

From Hudson:

"We are in crisis today. I have a connection to the people that we carry. The people who utilize our service don't realize it's going to be gone until it is gone. Losing service is going to dampen the lives of seniors. Children are not going to be able to get to school. This is a major crisis. We need funding now."

Among others who spoke were TWU International Executive Vice President Harry Lombardo, ATU International President Ron Heintzman, ATU International Secretary-Treasurer Oscar Owens, and California Federation of Labor Executive Secretary Treasurer Art Pulaski.

From Lombardo:

"The fight for quality public transit isn't just about transit workers. It's about all of us. Public transportation connects us. It makes it possible for working people to get to work and for businesses to stay in business. ... [Public transportation jobs] are indeed green jobs. Public transportation has been a green job forever. Because of public transportation there is less traffic, less pollution, better air quality, and fewer kids sick with asthma. That's the road we want to be on. That's the road that paves the way to a green economy. But that's not the road we are on. Why? Because of outdated national mass transportation policies. It's time to wake up Congress. We're headed in the wrong direction. We know what to do. When drivers are headed in the wrong direction, we turn it around and head it in the right direction."

Lombardo then directed attendees to get out their cell phones and send a text message to this number: 69866. And in the message field he told everyone to type in "Our ride" and then hit send.

From Heintzman:

"We need to tell members of Congress to get off their asses and pass this bill. It allows them to spend the money to keep transit running ... The money has already been appropriated. ... I've been told here in SF the mayor clearly has his head up his ass. Stop trying to balance the budget on backs of riders. Stop using the economy to get concessions. We need to tell him loud and clear: we ain't giving up shit."

From Owens:

"From the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge, our voices must be heard. From the prairies of Kansas, our voices must be heard. From Lookout Mountain in Tennessee ... from Iron Mountain in Alabama ... From Stone Mountain in Georgia ... "

From Pulaski:

"Public transportation keeps our economy moving. One hundred and twenty-five years ago today the Chicago streetcar workers decided to strike for seven days. They fought hard and won. They led the way towards improvements in mass transit. Thank them."

Pulaski led the crowd in chants:

"Fix our transit, and fix it now" and "Fund our transit, and fund it now."

The Reverend Norman Fong (apparently a replacement for the Reverend Jesse Jackson who was a no-show), executive director of the Chinatown Community Development Center

From Fong:

"This is a faith-based and community issue. For all of you environmentalists out there, the greenest community [in the nation] is Chinatown. Ninety percent of our community can't afford cars, and there's no parking anyway."

District 9 Supervisor David Campos

From Campos:

"Public transportation is a social justice issue. Right now there is a climate in [San Francisco] City Hall that is pointing the finger and blaming the drivers. We have to say no. The future of the riders and drivers is linked. There is going to be a ballot measure in November that is going to try to divide. We can't ignore the problem that we have a system that is getting money that is not being used well. Blaming labor is not the answer. Labor is part of the solution."

Note to readers: Campos himself is a one of four sponsors of a measure to reform the SFMTA that is headed for the November ballot. It, too, includes language that will reform the way driver salaries are arrived at, eliminating the current formula in which the driver wage floor is the average of the drivers of the two highest paid systems in the nation and replacing it with collective bargaining. However, this measure is much more comprehensive and is not set in stone -- it has about a two-week window for changes. I was a part of some meetings in City Hall to craft a Muni reform ballot measure, but was not able to make the last set of meetings -- the measure as it now stands is not much like anything that we talked about in the meetings that I participated in. On the whole, I like it quite a bit.

San Francisco Transit Riders Union Project Director Dave Snyder

From Snyder:

"San Franciscans have a love affair with Muni. Five out six take transit at least once a week. The threats to drivers should be seen in the bigger context of teachers without enough supplies and home healthcare workers being squeezed. Wall Street and global capitalism are putting the squeeze on America. The question is: how do we respond as a people? Like Tea Party people who say no to everything or by organizing and working together? SF TRU wants to be a voice so that more people take transit. It takes money. The controller's audit showed $3 million in savings if some drivers go to part-time. But SFMTA Executive Director Nat Ford has said recently that Muni needs $100 million. Why are we attacking the drivers when you're looking at $3 million versus $100 million? ...

"Everybody take public transit and thank your drivers."

Snyder himself reportedly took either BART or the 14 Mission from his home in the Mission District to the rally.

I'm sorry to say I did not catch the names and titles of all the speakers as I was taking notes.

Bob Planthold of Senior Action Network, speaking on behalf of disabled riders and their families.

3 comments:

I respect your reporter style writing. I wish you would add more detail about your personal reasons and experiences as a person conducting a car-free life style.

It seems to me that public transit is an enormous design problem. Transit systems are all caught in a saddle where slightly better service (in the conventional sense of more buses, longer hours and more routes) incurs exponential cost increases.

I would say to you, venture more in your thinking and system design for how a car free life style can be made better.

Hello, Thanks for you comment. I'm having trouble extending my bio so I'm giving you a little more information here:

I committed myself to the car-free life in 1990 for reasons that need no explanation.

But some readers think they do. So ... I turned down a job offer in the late 1980s because I would have had to buy a car, and at the point I was becoming increasingly uneasy with the car-based lifestyle and its environmental implications for humanity and the planet. And then I moved from the East Coast to the West Coast and briefly settled in Palo Alto, what a former SF Chronicle columnist called a 'hot bed of social rest.' It was hard to do anything without a car, and as often as I could, I took buses from the South Bay to San Francisco to look for places to live. Soon enough, I moved. It took me many years to find a community of like-minded people who want to move humanity towards a system of equitable and sustainable living. Equitable and sustainable? I mean in a way of life in which the planet's limited naturally resources are distributed fairly and in ways that take into account other species and future generations. I have been asked to launch into discussions of how that can happen, and in future postings, I will try. For now, people can go to the Livable City website for initial ideas.